Narrator / Reporter (possibly Nancy Updike or Robyn Semien)

I talked to a woman in Baltimore with an unusual name, and she doesn't want that name linked in anyone's mind with a house full of pests, so I agreed to call her Miss M on the radio. Miss M has had some very bad nighttime experiences with roaches, starting with her old place on Liberty Heights Avenue.

Ms. M doesn't live in that place anymore. She lives in a small house in O'Donnell Heights. The house is tidy, but it's public housing and it has serious multiple infestations. The mice in Miss M's apartment have abated temporarily this week for some reason, which has left the gluey mousetraps free for armies of roaches to get stuck on.

Every sticky rectangle has dozens of roaches on it, waving their doomed antennae. And yet, in spite of the glue traps, the raid, the boric acid, there are still roaches in every drawer she pulls open for me, every cabinet, the sink. They mill by the hinges of closet doors. They saunter down the walls, absolutely unafraid. Nighttime, of course, is the worst. Ms.

M's daughter, Brittany, without even hearing her mother's roach-in-ear story, told me she got a roach in her ear too, not just once. Twice.

Was it hard to go to sleep after they got in your ear? Was it scary?

A lot is exactly the problem, Ms. M says.

They just end up in your ear by mistake.

5,000?

But she also makes clear that, for her, the questions are beside the point.

While you were sleeping, your babies grew The stars shined and the shadows moved Time flew The phone rang. There was a silence when the kitchen sang its songs.

Money died. Machines were harmless and the earth sighed. The wind, you swept sound and grass.